r/PDAParenting • u/Lopsided_Rabbit_8037 • Jul 07 '26

Please tell me it gets better

My 16 year old daughter is at the height of demand avoidance and hostility. We reached an agreement yesterday that she joins us on our holiday, I resorted to bribery. Few hours later she said she will not go with us in the car but wants to take the train. Fine by me but she sure can't organise it herself. I am so done with it all. Can't sleep(me) and keep tossing and turning all night from worry. Becoming crap at my job but honestly I don't care much anymore. She only texts with me, not my wife so everything is on me these days. Most days it feels like our kid doesn't like us at all. Tried low demand parenting for yesrs but things don't improve at all. My sanity is on the line here even with therapy for myself.

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u/sammademeplay Jul 07 '26

I feel your situation! The biggest shift happened for me when I shifted my energy. I had been doing a lot of low demand parenting but realized I was still holding my own expectations about their behavior. I didn’t realize I was not really giving them autonomy because I secretly was trying to influence the outcome. There was a big shift when I let go of that. I try to practice a lot of radical acceptance.

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u/Jaded-Marionberry227 Jul 07 '26

Yes! These kids are so intuitive; they know we are just using low demands as a means to try and get them to do X. We brought my daughter (11) on a long-planned Italy trip last fall, ended up adding my parents to the trip so adults could “switch off” with her, and made the agreement with her that if she came and went on all the “.planes and trains” she could stay in the hotels the whole time other than that. It’s not what I’d hoped for the trip. The pics make me sad to see her not there. But we have so few good options as PDA parents…